Unlike what people might have mistakenly expected, the "new" CF is NOT going to happen overnight.
It's going to happen in stages. However, there are mainly going to be 2 stages:
1. The first stage is the CULTURE change stage. This is going to start happening from TODAY but will be an ongoing process. This will involve:
a. Changing the site rules - simpler, less legalistic, and more open
b. Changing the way rules are developed or changed - wikify it! The rules process should be a member-initiated community-propelled, and consensus driven, not something that a minority can decide on.
c. Changing the way moderators are appointed - the members decide! There will be forum moderators, category moderators, and then super moderators. Members nominated, members vote, members appointed. Appointments are for a 12 months - at the end, can be renominated, or not. The power is with the people. And yes, if you are not a Christian, you can be on staff, if people vote for you to do so. The whole process will be open, transparent, and clear. What about current staff? They will all have to be renominated and voted in at some stage.
d. No more warnings. If God can forgive, so can we. Of course, consistent rule-breakers and trolls will still be banned, but hey, that's not going to be avoidable for any site. But not legitimate users.
e. No more restriction of forums for non-Christians - if a non-Christian can walk into a church, a non-Christian can walk and post in any forum here. Some forums may still have gender or age restrictions, but the whole side, as should be any Christian site, will now be totally [OPEN].
f. No more restriction of faith icons - who are we to tell you who you are or what you believe in? In fact, no other restrictions - if you want to call yourself married, go ahead. It is between you and God, not you and CF.
g. Related to the above, if you believe you are a Christian, you are. No more reliance on our own definition of what we think is a Christian. In the end, who are we to judge.
h. Transparent appeals of moderator actions in a much more simpler format - with member input allowed - in fact, the community has a say in all appeals. The way it should be. As the community has written the rules up in the end.
i. No more hidden moderator forums - in fact, no hidden forums at all (except trash forums). If we can read it, you can read it. What is there to hide? If it has to be private, it can be in a PM. This will mean more transparency from all people.
The above outlines the setup of the new rules. A lot of the above cannot happen overnight, and will require some work. But the aim is for culture change at CF.
Many people, including current staff, will not be happy with the above, and some will quit, leave or resign. I bear you no ill-will - you do what you think is right, I do what I think is right. Yes, some of the above changes are controversial, and in fact, radical. But it's time for a total new way of looking at CF. We want to unite all Christians. Not just some.
2. The second stage is the TECHNOLOGY change stage. This is going to start happening over the next MONTH as this will involve extensive recoding and even software replacement. New features will be added. Members would have noticed that we have hit a hiatus in terms of new features being added and CF has not had a new feature for a long time. Well, I am looking at changing this. In the past, I've been the only server administrator, webmaster and coder. I've outsourced the server administration part of things, but there is room to outsource other things. The software behind CF requires a lot of improvements, and this WILL occur. I won't say too much about them because the second stage will be the part that will be most visible and trust me, when it happens, it will be obvious.
In other words, stage one, the culture change, is the change of CF's heart and soul, while stage two, the technology change, is the change of CF's look and body. In my mind, stage one is by far the most important. Both stages are hard to do.
Stage one starts now. Stage two will occur later and will mean some significant functionality changes.
